[1][2] On May 5, 1950, the UCMJ was passed by Congress and was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, and became effective on May 31, 1951.
"[3] In the aftermath of the 2003 United States Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled that the decision applied to Article 125, severely narrowing the previous ban on sodomy.
In both United States v. Stirewalt and United States v. Marcum, the court ruled that the "conduct [consensual sodomy] falls within the liberty interest identified by the Supreme Court,"[4] but went on to say that despite the application of Lawrence to the military, Article 125 can still be upheld in cases where there are "factors unique to the military environment" that would place the conduct "outside any protected liberty interest recognized in Lawrence.
[7] On December 26, 2013, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 into law, replacing the sodomy prohibition provision with forcible sodomy and bestiality prohibition provision.
[8] In 2016 the punitive articles of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice were reformed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.